


Between Spaces

by shriekinggeek



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 1001 ways to braid hair, Gen, an awkward case of amnesia, background lesbians, bits about magic songs, buildings too big to be reasoned with, children that aren't actually children (and are very confused by this), common sense carries a big stick, cryptic advice from a ghost, dealing with chronic pain, genderfluid dwarves, generic babysitter gets a name, history lessons are not age appropriate, how to deal with your problems by running like hell, how to deal with your problems by shrieking at them, how to deal with your problems by sneaking off to play games instead, righteous temper tantrums, running from homework, secret snacktime, skimmed over torture, slice of life but the life kind of sucks, smols with flower crowns, some kind of dwarf lore, tauriel is allergic to bullshit, tauriel is never not ready to fight, tfw everyone's mad at the babysitter, that awkward feel when the dead lady has more common sense than two magic spirits put together, the background lesbians get to be happy i promise nothing bad happens to them, there's always another fountain, unsurprisingly vague prophecies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 02:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 19,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10630269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shriekinggeek/pseuds/shriekinggeek
Summary: It's been years since the One Ring was destroyed. But something survived from the ashes and was brought back to Valinor...





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you have to get a little lost to find yourself.

Someone told him once the way to get through a maze is to walk while touching one wall. He doesn’t recall who it was, or even how long ago he heard it. Mandos isn’t even a maze. But the thought refuses to leave his mind.

He drags a hand along the wall as he goes, marveling at how smooth it is. Like the floors, and the pillars, and probably the ceiling too, it’s polished to a mirror finish. If he stops and looks closely for a moment he can see his reflection behind the streaks of near-iridescent gray and white, silhouetted by one of the countless crystal lamps somewhere behind him. He’s been told before how frail he looks, but he is so very small, even to his own eyes.

Well,  _ eye _ . He can clearly see the gaping void where his other one should be in the marble.

_ “You are lost, little one.” _

He nearly jumps out of his skin, little heart hammering as he whirls around to face the voice’s owner. It takes him a minute to realize why her words sound so strange; she speaks in Quenya, but her accent is thick and ancient like the Valar. This is not someone who died recently.

_ “Follow your feet back the way they came,” _ the speaker says patiently. It’s a woman, silvery and dressed in heavily embroidered robes. She looks elven, but then again all the spirits here do; they walk solidly enough like flesh and blood until they step into the shadows and cast faint lights of their own. But even sitting under a crystal lantern she seems ancient and thin with blurred outlines that make her look slightly out of focus even while her hands work at mending a tapestry’s edge. He scrubs his good eye just to be sure he isn’t seeing things, but she is just as blurry as before.

“I… I don’t want to be found just yet,” he says. His voice feels small and timid, but something in the elf’s presence softens and suddenly he isn’t quite so afraid.

She murmurs something to herself, shaking her head sadly even as she offers him an almost transparent hand.  _ “You had best come and sit with me then. There is a difference between lost and missing. Where one can be found, the other is not certain.” _

“How so?” He takes her hand and sits on the bench by her side, wincing at how cold her fingers are even for a fëa’s. It stings right down to the bone. “Can’t missing things also be found?”

_ “Not always. Sometimes they are gone forever.” _

He fidgets, cupping one hand self-consciously over his void-eye. Under his palm the empty space is almost as cold as her hands. The fëa watches him almost apologetically.

_ “Yes,” _ she says sadly,  _ “you know what I mean better than most. Did it hurt?” _

“I don’t remember what happened,” he whispers. His fingers dig into his scalp, worrying through his hair as he curls in on himself. He can’t find the words to express just how badly he  _ does _ want to know, how much it  _ terrifies _ him, but she must have figured it out because suddenly her arms are around him tucking his tiny frame to her side.

She is murmuring again but her accented words blur together as much as her outline to the world around her. He loses track of what she’s saying, only knowing that it is soothing like a lullaby. He is still so small, even next to her slight figure hidden behind layers of cloth and tapestry hem, that the top of his head doesn’t even reach her armpit.

Finally he hears her say,  _ “You are right to be frightened. You would be very different if you  _ could _ remember, I think.” _ And the words send a chill down his spine.

“Different in a bad way?” He doesn’t intend it but his voice squeaks nervously.

_ “Perhaps. I do not know for sure. But I do not think you could face these halls as bravely as you have.” _ She lets him go and returns to her work, occasionally glancing up as she weaves fresh threads among worn ones, strengthening them where they’ve worn thin.

It takes him a few minutes before he can answer her. He’s never been called brave before.

“…Who are you? If- if it’s alright that I ask- I mean—”

She laughs. It’s a hollow, faint sound.  _ “Do not be so nervous! They used to call me Míriel. I am much like you, wandering the far reaches of Mandos and waiting to be forgotten. Do you still have your name, child?” _

“Erui,” he says without thinking.  _ I am lost _ .

Míriel shakes her head at him.  _ “Oh child. No, no… You can still be found. One day that name will no longer suit you. And that is where we are different.” _

Just as he opens his mouth a presence rolls between the pillars in a wordless call before a voice rings out.

_ “Mairon! Where have you gone?” _

He starts, looking to Míriel nervously, but she doesn’t react in the slightest to his name.

She knew. She’d known all along.

_ “Go on,” _ she whispers and helps him climb down from the bench. Her touch is just as cold, but a little easier to bear now.  _ “The Ever-Weaver will want to know where you’ve been.” _

“Will I still be alone when I am found?” he asks her even as his little feet obediently pad towards the Maia calling. His voice is calmer now but his eye pleads for answers.

_ “Not even the lord of these halls can say for sure. But it is a big world out there, child. Bigger than you know.” _

_ “Mairon! _ You should not wander. Not all the fëar know you to be harmless.” The Maia stoops to nudge him along, faceless behind his bone mask and formless under his pale robe. Only his hands have shape on their own.

“I wasn’t alone,” Mairon protests. One of his hands clings to the robe like a kit to its mother’s tail. “See? I was just…”

He turns to point at the woman, but she and the tapestry are gone. Only the bench remains.

“…talking to…”

“Keep walking, Mairon. The lanterns will dim for the night soon.”

He stares at the empty bench until the Maia guides him around a pillar and it vanishes from sight.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mairon begins the long and painful journey of remembering.

Sometimes he dreams of fire. Of screaming and voices that are not elven or Maiarin. Of a mountain so tall and jagged that the caldera inside seems a thousand miles deep. Sometimes there is a smithy at the bottom, and sometimes there are three little people, but always there is lava spewing vapors so thick he nearly chokes. The smithy worries him, but the little folk are so much worse, for they come with a feeling of such intense dread and panic that he wakes screaming.

Tonight he dreams of the little people. They are small, almost as small as he is, and one of them is nearly as bony. All around them is overwhelming heat and gas that tastes of scorched stone and ash that should not be breathed too deep lest it cement in the lungs, but that is not the worst part.

He can almost see their faces. One’s in particular as he stands on the edge, so close that Mairon’s heart nearly stops in fear. It only gets clearer the more he focuses.

It is still not the worst part.

Not even the thing he holds over the lava, gleaming and gold and beautiful. Not even his companion pleading with heartbreak cracking his voice. Not even the look the bony one carries as he crawls through the murky shadows.

It is the one’s eyes as he turns back, a silent scream of unspeakable weight and the wordless regret of a man who faces death.

He does not know what happens next, but suddenly the gold drop is falling and panic hits him like a tidal wave as he realizes it  _ can’t _ touch the lava, it cannot be destroyed, it will only hurt him and oh Eru it  _ hurts it hurts so bad he is scared he doesn’t want to be unmade don’t let him be unmade he can’t face the darkness there are things behind it oh Valar HELP ME! _

 

It is Vairë herself who wakes him up, shaking him by the shoulders. But even with her wrapping threads of warmth around him it takes hours of coaxing before he can breathe again. Everywhere he looks the little people look back from the shadows, lit by fire with hauntingly dead eyes.

He doesn’t want to know what he’ll see when the bedside candle is blown out.

“No!” he begs as the covers are pulled up to his chin. He kicks them back as violently as if they had bitten him and curls up on the pillow. “I don’t want to dream! I c-can’t…”

Vairë looks at him with such pity that it hurts worse than if she’d snuffed out the candle on him.

“Oh Mairon. Those are not dreams.”

His heart threatens to beat its way free of his chest.

“Those are memories.”

 

Vairë does not send him to bed in the end. She loosens one of the many cloths draped around her and tucks him in so he can quiver against the crook of her elbow as she glides back to her loom. There she sits without explanation and begins a song that hums in each warp and weft. There is a story in her music, but Mairon can’t tell what the words are, only that they feel like waves and ships full of men. The more he watches her shuttle pass back and forth the more he hears ropes creaking and seagulls and fish, so many fish.

He wants to touch it, to feel the history of the fishermen take form under his own fingertips, but he is scared of breaking the song and losing their trek, though he knows this story ended years ago. The Weaver is just now putting it to cloth. If it  _ can _ be called mere cloth. To his eye each string glows like twisted strands of moonlight and salty wind and the weatherbeaten decks of the ships themselves. Here and there are gleams of odd notes that strike him as individual touches: shouted words and laughter, facial expressions and prayers to Ulmo.

Vairë notices his curiosity despite being absorbed in her music. She finds a handful of loose threads for him and drops them in his lap. He tries to weave them between his fingers, like her loom, but it doesn’t seem quite right. Still, a web of some kind takes place in his hands, and he likes it, lopsided though it is.

Mairon doesn’t remember finishing his web. Or drooling on the Ever-Weaver’s elbow. But eventually sleep comes for him and he drifts off to the rhythm of seamen catching fish.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone gets a name and friendship is magic.

The faceless Maia is calling him again. Mairon likes to call him Qision, the whisper, though to his ears the Maia sounds as loud as an army of echoing bells.

He is sensitive, they’ve told him. Dangerously so. The mere sound of the Music that brought him life had also made his ears bleed and his tiny body quiver. Even the slightest breeze that touches his skin sometimes sears like fire, and it is only his underclothes that seem to help. Vairë wove them, but out of what he has no idea. They are dark like his missing eye, like the void where light refuses to touch. Wearing them dulls his screaming nerves to the point where he can stand a tunic.

His ears have no such shelter. He can’t help but wince and clap his hands over his head as Qision’s call echoes through the halls. The Maia likely wants him for more lessons of some sort. First it was talking, and then walking, and then boring things like studying. Mairon can read and write again, and his penmanship isn’t too shaky, but Qision still won’t let him look at the tapestries of history, even though his own is in there somewhere.

He doesn’t feel much like studying. It’s a day for something else, something he doesn’t know yet, but it definitely doesn’t involve studying.

He stays tucked away in his shadowy corner until Qision’s presence comes and goes, and then he crawls out to toddle in the opposite direction. Maybe it can be an exploring day; these halls are so big he can’t even see the ceiling, if there even is one, and he gets the feeling there might be upper levels if he can just find the stairs. His suspicions are confirmed when the towering pillars eventually become proper walls and the mirror floors grow rugs.

For timeless halls they sure waste a lot of it going from one place to the next. 

If he ever builds his own hall, he decides it’s going to be a lot nicer to find things in than Mandos. Qision said he used to make things, though with how small his hands are now he’s going to need help. A lot of help.

Distracted, he stumbles into someone as she darts around a corner and they both end up in a heap of startled squeaks and little limbs.

“I’m sorry!” he cries, at the same time she shouts, “Watch it!”

They both freeze. The elleth starts giggling.  _ Elleth! _ Not a spirit but a solid little person, with stars in her eyes and hair the color of autumn leaves.

“I kn-knew it!” she grins. “I knew I c-couldn’t be the only child here! I mean the- the wars ended long ago, but there w-were other elves there and  _ some _ of them must have w-wanted to come back like me or see their families again and oh! What h-happened to your face?” She crawls to her knees and reaches for his missing eye.

Mairon recoils instinctively. “I- n-nothing, it was- I was born like that.” He covers it with his hand. 

“Oh. Huh.” She sits back, thankfully not trying to prod any further. “That’s a bit of a relief.”

“I’m… sorry?”

“I was afraid f-for a moment I ran into you so hard your eye fell out!”

He stares at her. “...How would that even…”

“I think I would have screamed!” The elleth giggles again. Mairon briefly imagines his own eyeball rolling down the hall and suddenly he’s hiding his face in his knees and joining her. It feels good to laugh, to know he still knows how. This is something he did all on his own without Qision’s tutoring, and that excites him.

“I’m Tauriel,” she says, cutting off her own laugh with a hand thrust in his face. Forest child? That explains her hair. It’s all over her face now, curling into hopeless tangles at the ends though it doesn’t seem to bother her at all. 

“Mairon.” He frees a hand from his too-long sleeve to take hers. As he suspected, even her light grip is painful, but not as much as he thought it would be and it’s  _ warm _ . She shakes vigorously, but she looks so excited he doesn’t have the heart to wince openly.

“Well Mairon! I am sincerely sorry for running you over. But I’m happy I met you. A-are you doing anything right now?”

“Not particularly,” he says while she helps him scramble to his feet.

“Good! Want to come exploring with me? It’s scary on your own w-with all those dark corners and twisty-turns a-and some of the rooms have ghosts!”

Ghosts? “Do you mean the fëar?” Mairon ventures. “Those are just people. Didn’t you used to be a fëa too?”

Tauriel pauses a moment, wrinkling her nose. She hasn’t let go of his hand yet. “Was I? ...I guess I was. N-not for very long though because here I am! They really don’t scare you?”

“They’re just people,” Mairon repeats quietly. He’s never thought of them as any different, just people without bodies. Is the concept supposed to be frightening?

“Huh,” she says again. She speaks with an almost mannish accent. Human. “You’re weird!”

Is weird bad? Does that mean she doesn’t like him? Is he not supposed to be weird? Suddenly Tauriel is running along and dragging him with, and he has no room for worry while trying to keep up.

 

With Tauriel’s help he does find the stairs, and they are just as tall as he thought they’d be. She’s barely taller than he is, yet she climbs with such enthusiasm that Mairon finds himself struggling to keep up, and when they reach the top the two of them collapse on the landing and sit there just breathing a moment.

“Everything’s so  _ big! _ ” Tauriel giggles. And then she’s on her feet dragging him along again. She is just as enthusiastic as before, but Mairon’s everything hurts more the longer he follows. At first he’s too happy to notice. Tauriel seems to grin every time their eyes meet and she babbles on like a happy little brook about things she’s reminded of in Middle-earth, and he is all ears, soaking in everything with shock that one little person can have so  _ many _ memories. How is there room for anything new when she already knows so much about, well,  _ everything _ , it seems?

But the pain catches up with him. Fatigue and the rawness of overused nerves overwhelms him to the point where his knees forget they exist, and suddenly he’s face-down on cold marble. 

He can hear Tauriel somewhere above him. From the sound of her voice she’s crying, but she turns him over with surprising gentleness and moves his head to her lap. Though her legs are bony she is much softer than the floor, and so much warmer, and as she keeps speaking to him the pain in his lungs settles enough that he can breathe.

“I’ve got you,” she keeps saying. “I’ve got you I’ve got you I’ve g-got- oh! Are you awake? Are you okay? Y-you just dropped out of the blue…”

“Nugh” is the only sound he manages to make. But Tauriel seems to think it’s enough, and she props him against the wall with her vest behind his head. It almost makes the wall soft enough not to hurt.

“Stay here,” she tells him, and scampers off to leave him with the amused thought that he can’t exactly go anywhere else.

For a while he’s left with just himself and the silence. He begins to wonder if it’s normal to hurt so much all the time. Something tells him it isn’t. Tauriel can run circles around him without wincing. Where did she go off to anyway? He starts wondering if she’s gotten lost and what might happen if she or Qision can’t find him again. What happens if you die in the halls of the dead?

“Mairon!”

Tauriel comes trotting back and he could almost cry with relief. 

“I found you some w-water!”

How in the... 

She comes to a screeching halt in front of him, shoes skidding on the floor and very nearly dropping her on her rear end, but sure enough sloshing in her hands is a dipper filled to the brim with clear water. “The-there’s a fountain over there and i-it’s really big and deep and has this fancy writing a-all around the edge and—” She sucks in a deep breath and offers him the dipper. Water sloshes all over her knees. “It’s real pretty, you  _ have  _ to come see it! But first drink!”

 

Tauriel is right about the fountain. There are several, actually, some that strike Mairon as rather familiar, but the one she shows him is cut from the same marble as the floor. The crystal lamps are everywhere, reflecting off the water and shedding dancing shadows, webs of crisscrossing lights that make the room seem so much brighter. 

“Why are there fountains in here?” she asks. “I thought for sure it was all pillars and weavings.”

She helps him sit on the fountain’s rim and he slumps gratefully, tracing the wet carvings with one hand. “This might explain it.”

“Why? What’s it say?”

“Ecthelion was here.”

“Oh.” Tauriel sits beside him and kicks her dangling feet. Her hair is tangling in her face again. “It’s nice here. The w-water almost sounds like singing, huh? We can stay until you feel better.”

“Thank you.” Mairon watches her wage war against her hair with just her fingers as something sparks in the back of his mind, like wind blowing the dust off ancient memories. Curious what it is, he reaches for her. “Do you mind if I...?”

“Just don’t pull too hard.” She tilts her head for him. The more he combs her hair the more his hands remember, and before he knows it he’s braided her hair in a sloppy Eregion fashion. Looking at it fills his mind with laughter and the faded presence of elves and dwarves, all craftsmen, all working together. 

Mairon has nothing else to tie her hair off with so he rips a loose thread from his sleeve.

“There. You should stop eating it so much now.” He watches nervously as she feels over the braid and her nose wrinkles again. But then she’s beaming at him even though loose strands are already collecting on her eyebrows.

“I like it! Feels sort of dwarf-y.”

“How would you know what dwarf braids look like?” he asks, but he can’t resist smiling back. 

“I m-met some once,” she tells him, all excitement and big eyes. Does she always stammer when she’s happy? “A whole b-bunch of ‘em! Well, th-they were a whole bunch but I-I only met a few at a time.” The excitement fades a bit. Her shoulders slump. “I was hoping to find one of them here, actually. There’s a r-rumor Durin’s sons go to Mandos when they die, unless they go b-back to Mahal.”

She really  _ has  _ met dwarves. “I think they go back to Lord Aulë,” Mairon says. “I’m sorry.” He pauses, realizing something. “...Maybe I can ask Lord Námo for you. I see him and Lady Vairë often enough.”

“ _ You know o-one of the Fëanturi? _ ”

Mairon winces back from her raised voice. “Er- yes? We are in Mandos, aren’t we?”

“Y-yeah but seeing and knowing are d-different!” If he thought Tauriel’s eyes were wide before, that was nothing compared to now. “You m-must be really important! Or s-special! O-or—”

Qision’s presence cuts her off. Even an elf can sense him coming when he calls that loudly.

“GHOST!” she shrieks, clinging to Mairon so suddenly they both tumble into the fountain.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mairon gets a harsh history lesson.

After meeting Tauriel he dreams more of dwarves and ethereal beings in forges, of rough and beautiful and impossibly pitched voices all rising together to craft in an orchestra of harmonies and clanging tools. He dreams of elves, of teaching and learning, and raised voices of frustrated teachers lecturing for the thousandth time that  _ only copper tongs _ can be used in the pickling acids. There are details, textures and smells and instructions, many of which click solidly in his mind as familiar, and still more that fly over his head entirely. 

He knows this time he’s remembering what it is to be a smith of Aulë, and what it feels like to work alongside, to teach and learn from elves and dwarves and men. The more he dreams, the more solid Mairon feels, the more  _ right _ things seem.

_ He is a craftsman. _ This is what he was meant to do. Rediscovering it makes his hands itch to fiddle with something, and the more he thinks on what he could make the happier the little glow in his chest grows.

Until he dreams of Celebrimbor.

 

It starts with braids. Like Tauriel’s. But this hair is dark as midnight and plaited by hands that knew what to do from the start. The result is thick but sturdy. Dwarven. But when the braids turn around it is an elven face that wears them, noble and tall with eyes that have grown weary from all they’ve had to see, and yet past that is a fire. Fëanor’s fire. 

In his dreams the elf knows him, calls him Annatar. Teacher. Equal.

Friend.

It should make Mairon happy to know his purpose has brought such joy to others, an excuse for friendship to form between unlikely groups and strange projects to result. But instead it makes him feel sick, and before he knows why he wakes up clammy in the middle of the night and calls for someone, anyone to rescue him from the anxiety spreading roots in his chest.

It isn’t Qision that answers, but another faceless Maia with robes of silver and a bone mask just as blank. She offers little comfort aside from a hot drink he’s ordered to choke down. No sooner has he drained the cup than his head feels heavy, his fingers and toes tingly and distant.

He needs to sleep, she tells him. How many times has he heard that now? Rest is important. He must recover. But  _ why _ he wonders, when every answer they give him spawns ten more questions? When each time he dreams he gets more nervous?

He doesn’t remember the Maia leaving. Whatever potion she brought him works quickly, and he doesn’t remember anything else until morning.

 

Qision calls for him when the lanterns are bright like the afternoon sun. Mairon is groggy and his mouth tastes like old herbs and something strong, but he staggers on with one hand clinging to the white robe. It’s not exactly white, now that he thinks about it. More… a blankness, like the Void in his eye but with a placeholder. Something to fill the space. It feels soft enough between his fingers, and holding on is probably the only thing keeping him walking in a straight line.

But Qision does not lead him to a quiet little study filled with old books.

By the time Mairon recognizes the rugs on the floor and Míriel’s empty bench his head is clearer. He’s been here before, once with an old ghost and once again with a giggling child almost as small as he is. 

“Where are we?” he yawns, scrubbing at his good eye. Vaguely he recalls a saying about not touching one’s eye without cleaning one’s hands first, but he doesn’t know where from. He’s too sleepy to listen to it anyhow.

“A place of memories,” Qision says helpfully. “Specifically, the world’s. If it were through the eyes of the Firstborn, or even the Secondborn, it would not be memory but spoils of the victor. History. Tainted by opinion. Altered by pride. Or pity. Or fear.” He pauses almost thoughtfully, and then adds, “many historians have seen this hall and wept at what their eyes beheld. Some have even cursed the Weaver’s name and called her a liar, but we weave what truly happens, not what foolish men choose to pass down.”

“But you aren’t opinionated at all, are you?” Mairon asks.

“You are here to learn. Not to judge. That is the Doomsman’s duty.”

He bites his tongue.

“This you must know,” the Maia continues, “what you see here and what you remember may vastly differ.”

Mairon thinks of the spirited elf with his dwarven hair and elven tools, and his stomach twists in a knot. He no longer regrets sleeping through breakfast. “...What will I see here?”

Qision looks- well, faces- toward him. There aren’t eyes behind that mask, not in the physical, visible sense, but something about his demeanor gives him an almost stern expression. And… something that feels like concern? Mairon wonders if it’s the blankness of this place getting to him or if this weaver has emotions after all.

“A tapestry. The web of truths that built the lie of Annatar and Tar-Mairon.”

Or he could be just as straightforward as ever.

“How is Annatar a lie?” Mairon asks. Curiosity is quickly burning away his sleepiness. 

“You have not remembered yet?”

“Remembered  _ what? _ ” It’s like talking to a labyrinth.

Qision very nearly hesitates and turns away, gliding at a snail’s pace to a doorway Mairon didn’t notice before. Is it his imagination, or is the Maia reluctant?

“You need to know. Follow me.”

For once Mairon holds the questions and pads after him, sticking close in the unfamiliar tunnel. It’s almost strange to be able to see the ceiling here, but the tapestries lining the walls have the same presence as the one he watched Míriel fix. Here and there are glowing threads that shine in their newness, evidence of her repairs. It makes him relax to know he wasn’t dreaming her up after all.

They stop near the far end, where a single tapestry branches off into spiderwebs of threads that somehow, impossibly, link strands of ideas and memories from one being’s history to the next. 

He suddenly realizes Qision wasn’t lying when he’d said the world has a memory. He can see it now, just beneath the surface of every stone tile, behind every corner of marble, that the webs don’t stop where the tapestries end. Instead they are one with the halls.

This whole place is a weaving. Tapestries are merely where the threads of time overlap for one person’s experience.

“...How do they get to be perfect rectangles?” he wonders aloud.

“Eru likes geometry,” Qision says as if this explains everything. “Come look. This is Celebrimbor’s history.”

Mairon scrambles over and climbs the bench to stare at the spot his guide points to. There isn’t much tapestry beneath it, or very many webs.

“From here on. This is where you and he met.”

At first it just looks like an odd mix of coarse and smooth threads, though he knows full well each one is twisted from strands of raw concepts. He reaches a hand out to brush the tapestry’s corner with butterfly light fingers, and that’s when it unravels around him. 

 

Celebrimbor is a friend. That’s the simplest way he can think of putting it, as he watches the elf befriend a dwarf called Narvi and many others. They flock to him like moths to an open flame, growing in clouds of shared knowledge and buzzing ideas until even the beautiful stranger called Annatar is drawn in.

But alongside the elf’s threads are Annatar’s, and Mairon listens in with horror as he recognizes the voice he speaks with, the silver-tongued words he uses to gain Celebrimbor’s trust and the beautiful promises of knowledge he taunts him with.

There are warnings, of course. Voices of wisdom that plead with Fëanor’s grandson not to listen, to cast this stranger out. He listens, heeds, and ignores them all. 

Celebrimbor knows. He isn’t blind to what lies behind spewing poetry. But while Annatar dwells under his roof good inventions grow, and he intends to squeeze every pure idea, down to the last drop of inspiration, that he can before the storm hits.

The voices and images around Mairon blur in a haze of pain as he follows Celebrimbor’s story through hell. He might be screaming, but the memories are so powerful they block out all else.

The Rings of Power are born. And scattered. The One Ring saps Annatar- no-  _ Sauron _ of everything bright he has left until only the angry shell is left to craft things of evil, and oh does he craft them.

There are unnameable horrors he tests on Celebrimbor himself.

Mairon  _ knows _ he’s screaming now, he can feel his throat tearing like he’s swallowed sharp gravel and there is a hand on his shoulder just as he watches that elf- that poor, poor elf, that once bright face with the flames behind his eyes and that cheerful, hopeful smile now broken and bleeding and pierced by-  _ Eru above is that a banner shaft _ —

 

_ “...Should have listened the first time I told you he is too young!” _

He is on the floor. Sprawled on his side? It’s hard to tell when everything smells like fear and bile.

_ “He needs to know! My job is to teach him! He must learn! If not from me then his dreams will come anyway!” _

_ “You should have told me he’d begun remembering! I’d have called Estë and Lórien- prepared more sleeping potions- something! Anything but this!” _

He is. He’s laying on the side with his missing eye where he can’t see the floor. From the feel of his head he fell off the bench and hit it. Now that clarity is drifting back to him, everything else hurts too. His ears. His lungs. His entire chest, like he’s climbed the stairs that winded even Tauriel twice over.

Qision and the silver Maia are arguing, venom flying back and forth between them like actual sparks. Mairon has woken up from one war just to listen to another.

_ “His memories are part of the healing! If he does not know of the evils he once did what is to stop him from…” _

“You do not need to hear any more of this, child,” a voice whispers in his ear, and suddenly he’s being scooped up so his face can hide in someone’s shoulder as the Maiar and their raised voices fade to far off echoes and then silence.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mairon gets a few much needed explanations.

He comes to in a place that smells like old lint and beeswax. The ceiling is white marble, almost painfully blank and naggingly familiar. For an ageless moment he just lays there as if stunned. What happened? Where is he? What smells like ...pipe smoke?

He finally manages to stir and brings a hand to his face with a little sound. Something rustles nearby. On his left. Where his Void-eye can’t see a thing.

“Back from Irmo’s realm I see.”

Turning his head takes so much strength, and even though it’s a small movement it makes him feel like a cup of water being sloshed around.

“Welcome back, for all it’s worth,” says Míriel where she sits, pipe clenched between her teeth and a knitting project sprawled across her lap. She pauses a moment and sets her needles down, looking up with the pipe aloft. It makes the room smell warm, far more personal than cold tapestry dust. “But most people would say _good morning_ , wouldn’t they? Well, it isn’t morning and it hasn’t been good to you, so I see little point.”

He can only look at her blankly.

“You did not dream, did you? A small mercy. How are you feeling, child?”

Mairon struggles again to think. He must be in Míriel’s room, but how did he get here when this morning he was…

...This morning…

He remembers. His chest screams and suddenly it’s so hard to breathe, yet at the same time too easy- far too easy- and his breaths come faster and faster. It hits him like a wall to a snowball’s face and Celebrimbor’s screams echo in his ears as he curls in on himself and trembles, gasping and clawing at his chest.

_It was real! It really happened, it wasn’t a dream, oh Eru above…_

“Now I’ve done it,” he hears Míriel say and there’s more rustling. Suddenly the smell of smoke is right next to him. Even as he struggles to breathe, even as she scoops him into her arms, he wonders how it is ghosts that barely look solid can touch and smoke things so easily. “I’d have been a poor mother after all. Here child, that was long ago. Long before you were born. You are here _now_ and safe. Do you understand? My great-grandson has long since—”

“G-gran-s-” Mairon hiccups, trying to recoil. _Celebrimbor’s great-grandmother_.

She yanks him close again and presses a kiss to his forehead.

He freezes.

The pain in his chest splits open into something hot that leaves him a trembling, sobbing, limp mess in her arms. Míriel tucks him close and there is no yelling, no violence or malice in her voice as she talks to him just like the first time, and her hands are almost warm as they rub his hair and thin little shoulders.

“Why?” he chokes. “Why are you s-so nice to me when a-all I’ve ever- all I did was hurt—”

She shushes him, stroking his hair back from his face. “Do you know how long I’ve been watching these halls? I have been the Ever-Weaver’s assistant since before the First age. You are not the first with regrets.”

“R-regret doesn’t bring back the dead.”

“No. Mandos does. And here you are.”

Mairon wriggles free enough to look up at her, still as shocked and confused as before.

Míriel raises an eyebrow at him. “Did they not tell you, child? You’ve been dead for quite a while now. You’ve barely come back.”

He draws in a shaky breath and pulls away- she lets him this time- scrambling around for something- the floor! He tumbles off the bed and fumbles for a rug corner, yanking it up and staring at his reflection in the marble underneath.

His hair glows. Like the fëar, so without substance of its own that it curls and flickers like fire around his head.

“But I…”

He keeps staring, trying to process but it doesn’t seem to be sinking in. How long has he truly been here? Why doesn’t he remember being dead? Or coming back?

Who _is_ he?

Míriel rustles beside him so her reflection hovers beside his. He doesn’t look quite as strange next to her, though he can see now parts of him are trying to be solid.

“You said you do not remember what happened,” she says gently. “But how much do you know?”

“...Not as much as I thought I did,” he whispers. “Maybe nothing after all.”

“This would have been easier had they given you to an elf.” Finally, there is a trace of venom in her voice, but it isn’t directed at him. “We may not be the best mothers but we would not have left you with this all on your own!”

The door slams open, buffeting Mairon with a gust of dusty air, but though he winces his eye’s still glued to his reflection.

“Mairon! There you—”

“ _Get out,_ ” Míriel snaps.

“ _Excuse_ —”

“These are my chambers and the boy badly needs rest now GET OUT!”

Silence. Mairon decides not to move. Though he can’t see what’s going on he can almost feel Qision’s rage behind that bone mask. Míriel may be old. And dead. She may be the Weaver’s aide, looking after the tapestries, but even she must follow the rules, mustn't she?

But Qision leaves, closing the door sharply behind him.

More silence screams in Mairon’s ears. He turns around and sits proper, eye wide.

“...You just yelled at a Maia,” he breathes.

Míriel’s face is stony as ever. Behind her cold eyes, buried deep is a spark like Fëanor’s fire, and he is reminded suddenly that _she_ was the one who kindled it, who fanned it so high that passing it down took everything from her. “I am almost forgotten, child. I am nobody. And _nobody_ can do as they please.”

And then she winks at him.

Despite himself he manages to giggle. And then all the pain and fatigue come washing back and he doubles over weakly.

“I was serious about that rest,” she says and scoops him back into her arms as if he weighs nothing even though he feels so heavy.

“My tummy hurts,” he whimpers.

“Ah? You are just hungry, child. Let’s see if we have anything for that, shall we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, summer semester's been kicking my ass. Never let anyone tell you art homework is easy because it's nOT


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get happy. And then they get sad.

His stay with Míriel is a short one, but it’s the happiest he’s ever felt since… well, it’s the happiest he can _remember_ being. And he is remembering more and more each day; every morning he wakes to fresh thoughts and newfound horror to the kind of person Sauron was. But when memories turn to nightmares and he wakes himself crying out, Míriel is there to answer him, not with a cup of sleeping medicine, but a warm embrace with lingering tendrils of pipeweed. In minutes she weaves a level of comfort that takes even Vairë all night to make, something he has never seen from Qision or the other faceless healer.

Safety.

Míriel asks him if the robes he’s swimming in are warm enough, and when he admits they aren’t quite, she knits him a scarf. She asks if he has enough blankets at night, if he’s had enough to eat, she carries him when he gets tired, and always, _always_ she speaks to him with gentleness.

Sometimes he tells her of his dreams, describing some of the vivid memories that refuse to leave his mind. It brings a thoughtful look to her face, not pitying but curious. Míriel, too, is a weaver, and she knows these halls just as well as Qision does.

“I know that tapestry. Would you like to see it?”

At first he says no. He has enough trouble trying to sort out his thoughts without adding more visions to his memories.

But when he finally says yes she holds his hand the whole time.

Míriel does not make him look _into_ the threads and see firsthand their records. Instead she hoists him to her hip and points out each scene, describing what each color, each thread type means. She reads history for him through the dust until he has something complete, and when even a disconnected reading is too much and he shivers on the walk back to her rooms, she tells him how to make thread, how to twist strands and make them glossy. She tells him how to coat strings in beeswax and how to tie a thousand knots with just a few twitches of a sewing needle. She talks of embroidery, of how difficult it is to dye thread consistently, of needlework she’s done here and there in the halls.

“You teach better than Qision.”

Míriel snorts at him. “I am not teaching you _anything,_ child. The most I’ve done is give you a guided tour of old wall hangings.”

“But the thread…”

“An old woman’s ramblings about her job and how much my hands ache afterwards. No more, no less.” She turns to regard with with a curiously raised eyebrow. “If you want me to actually teach you proper, you need to ask. They sometimes say curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back. Do you understand?”

Mairon thinks for a bit. “...Who is ‘they’?”

Míriel snorts again. “Someone. People. Does it matter?”

“Sometimes it does,” Mairon says, and then there’s a hint of a smile on the elf’s face.

“My point is that children should be full of questions. It should be harder to shut them up than it should be to get them to speak. They should be bright and full of energy! Muddy footprints everywhere, growing rock collections, blunt honesty…” She waves a hand. “Whatever! But curiosity is where learning is _born_ , child. And questions are where you start first.”

Mairon glumly watches his bare feet. There is so much he doesn’t know- that much he _does_ understand- but he’d no idea there was a wrong way to teach.

He is suddenly very reluctant to go back to Qision.

“...Míriel?”

Her pipe clicks between her teeth as she sews. “Hm.”

“Am I a bad child?”

She splutters, needle and all flopping to the floor. “ _Hardly!_ Has your caretaker told you you are?”

“No…” he says carefully. At least, he doesn’t think Qision would say so out loud. No, he doesn’t even know that Qision would think such a thing.

...Does he?

“But good children don’t have to be pulled from the Void,” he finishes quietly.

“Who says?” Her pipe clicks more as she regathers her things.

Mairon fidgets. “I don’t know. But good children don’t do things they deserve to go to the Void for.”

“By that logic no innocent would ever be killed either.” Míriel holds her pipe aloft and breathes a long, thoughtful stream of smoke. “And yet we’ve had… Mm, I forget how many kinslayings. And wars? Hah! We have _entire halls_ of tapestries dedicated to wars. Do you know how many innocents suffered in each one?”

“N-no,” he says. He’s starting to feel a little queasy. He- Sauron- was the _cause_ of war, once.

“Too many.” She turns and taps out her pipe, one hand searching for a cloth to clean it out with. “And not all of them were entirely innocent. There were good _and_ bad people on both sides. Nothing is defined in black and white, or if they are, they aren’t pure.” Her hands are polishing the stem now. "Do you see? We are all painted in shades of gray.”

“...Even me?”

He finds the pipe’s bowl pointed at his chest.

“ _Especially_ you. Child, you might as well be a blank slate. You’ve no memories but the ones you make for yourself, you have innocent ey- well, _an_ innocent eye… I suspect you’d cry if you so much as crushed an ant.”

Mairon blinks, and then curls in on himself to think. “...When we first met… you said I was lost.”

“You still are, but continue.”

“...And that I could still be found?”

There’s a knowing glint in Míriel’s eyes as she puts her pipe and rag away. “You are going to ask _by whom_ , aren’t you?”

He nods.

“Yourself, of course. Once you find your feet and get them under you, well, there you are. You can go anywhere you like, become anyone you want. Within reason.” She pauses and snorts. “Advice you never asked for, but it’s there all the same.”

Mairon’s fingers dig into his scarf, vaguely wondering if it would be wide enough to hide him completely if he spread it out. “Could I… even be a good person? Someone the Valar are proud of?”

An awkward silence rings through the air. For a few heartbeats neither of them move, but then Míriel stands and brushes her dress off.

“You already are a good child,” she says, and there’s something so deeply sad about her voice. She turns her face quickly, but not quick enough for him to miss the first look of true, heartbreaking pity written in her features.

“...But not good enough for them,” he whispers, understanding growing like icy fear in his stomach.

The Valar are _never_ going to be proud of him, are they?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tauriel returns and throws a tantrum

He runs the day Qision is supposed to come get him.

Mairon isn’t sure what else to do; the more he thinks about it, the more  _ scared _ he is. He’s terrified of learning more about his past, terrified of the nightmares to follow, terrified of Qision and the other faceless Maiar always watching but never reacting when he cries out, not in the ways he needs them to. And Míriel, like Námo and Vairë, has far too many duties to look after him for long. She doesn’t have time for him either.

But she at least  _ tried _ .

And so he hides, curled up in a space between pillars where a tapestry hangs low enough to cover him like a curtain as he thinks. What is he to do? He isn’t sure how to find himself- not on his own, anyway- and it’s clear the Valar wouldn’t like him trying to look after himself.

_ I don’t even know where to find food _ , he realizes as his stomach rumbles with an empty growl. But what can he do? Go back to people he is no longer sure even care for him? Who will never be proud of him? And words can’t describe how  _ badly  _ he wants to make them proud, how badly he wants to be told  _ you’ve done well _ . This at least he knows is a constant from his old life; it’s even in his name. 

_ Maira _ . Admirable.

_ But what to do? _

He’s never felt so alone.

His chest starts to hurt, and before he can stop himself his face is buried in his thin little knees, shaking with quiet sobs. Helpless! He hates the feeling and knowing not much can be done about it.

“Hello?” someone calls.

Mairon panics, clapping both hands over his mouth. No! Don’t find him! Not just yet, he isn’t ready, he doesn’t want to see Qision—

“I- I thought I heard crying,” the familiar voice says. “Are you alright?” She repeats herself in Sindarin, and that’s when Mairon breaks.

“Tauriel,” he chokes out. “I’m o-over here.”

He barely has time to scrub at his good eye before the tapestry is flicked aside and suddenly a rather tall Tauriel is crawling in beside him, sliding one arm over his little shoulders to pull him to her side where everything is warm and smells like fresh grass and pressed flowers and leather and dust and…

Everything starts blurring together in a panicked rush of fright and relief, rapid breathing and gentle words, but somehow, eventually, he manages to catch his breath while the elleth rubs his back. 

“Just breathe. There you are, see? You’re okay.”

He fills his shaking lungs. “...I’m s-sorry- I h-haven’t seen you in so long and we finally meet again and I—”

“Hush-hush.” Tauriel curls around him, flicking a stray firelike curl away from his face so he can see her slight smile, still as full of stars as ever. “I have something to show you.” She thrusts a hand down the front of her collar, fumbling with a chain until a pendant tumbles out to dangle in front of him. It’s wide and flat, shaped like a butterfly made of carefully cut glass pieces and edged by a silver rim so the light can shine through. There are only a few crystal lanterns in this hallway, but the butterfly catches them in little windows of color.

“Oh,” Mairon breathes.

“I know!” She drops the butterfly, chain and all into his lap so he can turn it over with his own hands. “I found my father! We finally reunited- I haven’t seen him in ages-  _ actual  _ ages! A-and he had this commissioned, well, a pair of them, so we could carry the moment with us always! His is a little bigger and has more violet than red, but- oh, isn’t it  _ pretty? _ ”

It is. It really is. The more Mairon looks at it, the more he sees, the tiny flecks of metal and gem dust in the outer panes that glitter at every angle, the painstakingly careful coloring of other panes so they are clear as polished crystal and vibrant as Yavanna’s flowers, the thin strips of lead gluing them together, even the delicate textures in the butterfly’s abdomen. 

“I’m happy for you,” he says mechanically. That’s what you’re supposed to say to friends, isn’t it?

Tauriel considers him a moment. “I was wondering if you could tell me how it was made. I’d ask the glassmaker, but I don’t know which one my father visited.”

Mairon fidgets. And then tenses. “...You knew I’m- I was...”

“A smith? Yeah, my father told me. I was too little to remember Sauron before.”

This close there’s no way to hide his shivering from her. But she doesn’t move from where she has an arm looped comfortably around him.

“...I think he was a little angry with me at first,” Tauriel continues. “He didn’t know how tiny you are until I told him. A-and then he talked to one of the Maiar and found out you’re  _ really _ tiny!” She giggles. “Even after a few summers you’re still so little.”

Mairon squirms until he can sit upright and looks at her proper. She’s nearly twice his height now, hair falling past her waist even with how twisting her ends have become, and her limbs are starting to show the lankiness of pubescence. 

She’s  _ grown _ .

When he looks down at his own hands they are just as little as ever, and he knows even if he stands on his toes he won’t be much taller than he was when they first met.

“...They also told us about your condition,” Tauriel adds softly. “How you’re frail and always in pain. I told my father, I said I didn’t know Sauron but I do know you, and you couldn’t hurt a fly.” She blinks. “...Even if you wanted to.”

“I haven’t seen any flies yet,” Mairon finds himself mumbling. 

“What, there aren’t any flies in Mandos?”

He shakes his head.

Tauriel thinks for a bit, wrinkling her nose. “What about flowers? Or- or plants of any kind? Or the sun?”

“I saw the sky and the ocean in one of the tapestries…”

His friend makes a sound that ends like a screech, and suddenly she’s gathering him in her arms and staggering to her feet. Mairon snatches at the butterfly’s chain before it can tumble to the ground. 

“Those are _old_ memories!” she hollers as she staggers along. “Remembering and seeing for yourself are two different things!”

Mairon wheezes in her grip and fumbles until his arms are around her neck. He can’t quite see where they’re going, not with his hair in the way, but he can see enough to put the pendant back around her neck. There, now it’s safe.

“Tauriel? Where are we going?”

“Outside you silly! You need to see the sun.”

...There’s an outside?

Of course there is! The entire continent of Valinor lies outside these halls. But he… well, he’s never seen  _ anything _ outside Mandos with his own eye before. The thought strikes deep and hollow.

He hasn’t seen a forge before either.

Mairon cranes his neck, trying to see as much as he can of the halls that lead outside. The pillars around them stand like trees, and like a forest they don’t end more than they thin away to open air. But when he looks behind all he sees is a solid wall of reflective marble that reaches high into the sky. 

The sky however… the sky goes on forever. Reaching farther than his eye can see, even if he’d had a far-seeing glass, in all directions like a harshly blue dome set high above a plate.

And he is smaller than a crumb.

“Tauriel,” he whispers. “Tauriel, it’s too big.” He tries to curl up in her arms, but she staggers and nearly drops him. She plops to her knees instead.

“Of course it’s big, silly, it goes all the way into the outer dark!” she says once she sees he’s looking up. “You sound like a dwarf stepping outside his cave for the first time!”

“Not all dwarves live in caves,” he tries to retort, but his voice is tiny, quickly cut off by the wind and oh how it smells of so much! He opens his mouth and  _ tastes _ it, trying to process so much his body aches and his head spins. Tauriel lets him stay on her lap where her shadow shields him. 

Funny, for all his old books saying darkness is evil, it’s one of the few things that hasn’t harmed him.

“There are clouds chasing the breeze,” Tauriel tells him softly. “You can’t look up right now so I’ll just tell you about it. They’re white with blue shadows and- oh! there’s one shaped like a horse! They all look so fluffy and puffy like pillows! Ahhhh, one’s moving over the sun…”

Sure enough the world dims a little, cooling down like the elleth’s shadow. Mairon dares to push himself upright for a glance. The clouds really do look soft! He spots the horse shaped one, and another Tauriel tells him looks like a foot. And a mushroom. The sun comes back quickly, and Tauriel wastes no time holding her hands over his face and fussing over whether or not he looked at it.

It makes his chest feel warm. 

“Do you want to see flowers now?”

“Is it far?” Mairon asks hesitantly. Even with the happy glow in his chest, he knows he can’t walk long distances without pain.

“...Only a little.” Tauriel wrinkles her nose in thought, and from her face he can tell she’s also remembering that time with the staircase. “I can carry you.”

He wants to protest and ask if he isn’t heavy- wasn’t she staggering before?- but Tauriel is already determined to pull him onto her back so he can peep at the world over her shoulder. He gets more than an eyeful of wild red hair before he’s settled, but it smells so much like warm leaves that he’s too fascinated to mind.

She takes him along a path that radiates heat like the sun. He stares at the dirt, realizing with slight awe that he can identify the clay and iron in it, and then his friend trots into the grass and a different kind of warmth is reflected up at him, all green and dampness and hidden insects singing about summer.

And then he starts seeing flowers. Daffodils and daisies, dandelions, snowdrops, bluebells, and a long list of names Tauriel keeps telling him, but even when she points each one out he knows he’ll never remember them all. They sit in the grass and she begins plucking flowers until her lap is buried in a carpet of them. She shows him how to twist the stems together, weaving with flowers until there are ropes and circlets and bracelets all made out of soft-petaled, sweet smelling plants.

He finds himself telling her of Qision and his fears while they weave.

At first she doesn’t say anything. She calmly set all the chains and wreaths aside and pulls him into a sudden, fierce hug.

“We have to get you out of there.”

Mairon freezes. Is leaving an option?  _ Could _ he just leave the halls?

“That place isn’t good for you,” Tauriel continues. “You didn’t even get to see the sun! They let me go find my father right after I had recovered, but you they’ve kept for  _ years _ and I know you’re sick but-  _ not even flowers! _ They could have brought you some at least!”

He doesn’t realize she’s crying until the first sniffle. He didn’t think it would hurt this much just to watch her cry for him.

“It’s not fair!” she sobs. “It isn’t! It’s not fair for you to be all alone tucked away in a dark place that smells like dust all your life! No friends, no flowers, not even toys! What have  _ you  _ ever done to the Valar?”

“...I was Sau—”

“ _ You’re a baby! _ ” Tauriel all but shrieks. “A tiny little baby who hasn’t done anything but play games with me and sneeze from old wall hangings! You don’t deserve  _ this! _ ”

_ “There are many who would argue with you, child.” _

Both of them jump, clinging to each other as they look up into the shadowed face of the Lord of Mandos himself.

Mairon garbles something quiet and terrified, struggling to bow while still bundled in Tauriel’s lap. But Tauriel clings all the harder and glares-  _ glares! _ At a  _ Vala! _

“You’re a big jerk!” she yells. “Mai hasn’t seen anything nice or made any friends because of you!” She squirms out from beneath Mairon and stomps one slippered foot in the grass. “I don’t  _ care _ if you’re a Vala or- or if you know where Kili is- you made Mai cry and didn’t do anything about it!”

She points an accusatory finger and Mairon’s heart just about stops.

But Námo barely reacts. And when he speaks- if it can be called mere speaking; there is far too much Music in his voice for ordinary words to carry- his tone is gentle.

_ “Your friend is not in my halls, little one. Nor is he currently in Mahal’s care. You have a compassionate flame in your heart; take care of it and you two shall meet again.” _

Tauriel freezes, lip quivering. “I said I don’t care,” she mutters. An obvious lie.

_ “Mairon.” _ Námo turns to him.  _ “Is it true you have no friends?” _

He doesn’t need much time to think it over, though he still clings nervously to the wreath of flowers that has now slipped from his hair to his neck like a second scarf. “...N-no... I have Tauriel and Míriel.”

“You still made him cry!” Tauriel chimes in.

_ “Truly. I, personally, have been the cause of Mairon’s tears?” _

“No,” Mairon tries to say at the same time his friend hollers, “Yes!”

_ “Interesting.” _ The Vala kneels, robes spreading like mist, and with a wave of his hand the flowers Tauriel has woven seem to brighten up, their wilting fading until they look freshly picked.  _ “Do not worry, little ones. All will be well.” _

“...How can you say that?” Tauriel asks, but Mairon can see much of the fight has left her by now.

_ “Because your meeting was no accident.” _

Námo turns and vanishes among the distant pillars of his halls, leaving as silently as he came. But no sooner has he left than Qision comes to fetch Mairon. He reluctantly lets Tauriel come along when her voice goes so shrill Mairon has to cover his ears, but she walks calmly with one hand in his and her other clutching as many flowers as she can carry.

When they get to Mairon’s room there’s a little duck figurine sitting on his pillow, made of carved wood painted a cheerful shade of yellow.

He names it Bobble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I Am Apology, thanks to the solar eclipse there was no break whatsoever between summer and fall semesters and my classes doubled the homework load so updates are either going to be more often or far, far less so. uh. Wish me luck guys.
> 
>  
> 
> bUT HEY I UPDATED


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mairon gets to see a forge for the first time ever.

Qision comes to wake him before any of the lanterns are even lit. If Mairon were less groggy he might laugh at the sight they make, a faceless Maia and a frumpled child wearing a crooked flower crown with a toy duck in his little hands. But he’s barely awake enough to stay on his feet, and with all the excitement from yesterday his nerves ache deeply. 

Eventually the pain wakens him enough to realize Qision isn’t leading him to the usual study room full of old books and creaky desks. This is a new hallway- or rather, a much older one. The tapestries here are misshapen and so long some of them trail onto the floor like rugs. His foot catches on one tattered corner and he gets the briefest flash of lumber-song and seagulls before he lands on his stomach. Bobble flies out of his grasp to bounce off his caretaker’s robes, but his chin and hands don’t get so soft a landing. It _burns._  This is just old cloth! Why should it feel so much like harsh rope and gravel when he knows normally even the old threads should glide under his fingertips?

“On your feet, now.”

Qision’s hand digs into the back of his robe, lifting Mairon clean off the ground so suddenly his clothes pull his lungs in. It’s enough of a shock that his head spins with blotchy colors, and he wavers after his feet touch the floor. Qision’s hand is there again, gripping his arm to steady him, but there is no life to those fingers, no warmth to that touch like there is when Tauriel or Míriel come to him. 

Suddenly the air feels a little colder.

“Let me see your hands.”

Mairon obediently holds them out, lets the Maia inspect the angry red in his skin and tilt his chin to see if he scraped anywhere enough to bleed.

“You are fine,” Qision tells him. “Keep walking.”

He doesn’t feel fine.

 

He’s still dizzy when they reach their destination, a bare hallway ending in a set of double doors that look to be grown from curling vines of living metal. It’s like catching a glimpse of a forest in all its intricacies, somehow flattened and not. Mairon finds himself wishing he were feeling better so he could appreciate it more, but no matter how long he looks his vision still blurs in and out. 

Qision gives one of the doors a slight push and gust of metallic air washes over them, along with a strip of light. “This is a practice forge,” he explains, “intended to help the Noldor… ah, how did they put it?  _ Work through _ some things. We have arranged for a few metalworkers to come here and train you.”

Excitement floods through Mairon’s veins.  _ A real smithy. _

“And another thing. They do not know you have been reborn.”

Mairon hesitates. It’s a relief to know his teachers won’t be bringing up more painful memories, but at the same time…

“Then,” he starts nervously, “who am I to them?  _ What _ am I?”

Qision’s bone mask tilts at him. “I’ve told them the partial truth. You are a damaged child trying to get back on his feet. I may have suggested to them you are a half-Maia, thus explaining your abilities and miraculous survival, despite your… condition.”

_ Abilities like what _ , he finds himself thinking,  _ fainting? _

“Try not to give them your name. Off you go.”

And then Mairon is shoved inside with the door creaking shut behind him.

 

He finds himself face-to-chest with a tall, silver eyed elf.

“No announcement or anything,” the elf says and crosses his sizeable arms over his chest. “And no preparation time. Well that’s just lovely. Are you it, then?”

Mairon feels stunned. The forge is warm, much warmer than the rest of the Halls, but for some reason he’s shivering.

“P-pardon?”

“Our new apprentice,” the elf clarifies. “Assistant or what have you. Here to learn.” His words are heavily accented with sounds as harsh as his face. “The weavers have been in and out all month telling us to expect a new smith. I’m going to assume you are he unless you tell me otherwise.”

_ “There he goes again, Bright-Eyes that see naught! Quick to assume, but to reach truth he is not,” _ someone- a woman- sings from somewhere in his blind spot. Mairon turns his head to see another elf kneeling among what look like barrels of coal, all soot smears and cheerful smiles. She gives him a brief wave.

“ _ Eru’s tits _ woman, will you  _ stop _ with the—”

“Child in the room,” she cuts in.

The silver-eyed elf turns to Mairon with a look of half defeat, half familiar annoyance on his face. “How old are you?”

Mairon opens his mouth to answer. And stops, realizing he doesn’t actually know. The elf must know the feeling because he sighs and runs a hand through his hair.

“A best guess will do. I’m only asking to get Herenel off my back.”

“Oh.” Mairon fidgets, realizing belatedly his hands are tangling his sleeves with wrinkles. “Um- te- maybe twenty years? I’m not  _ exactly  _ sure, Qision- my m-mentor- he still keeps time by the Trees, so—”

“I said best guess,” the elf says gently. “You’ve already given me what I needed to know. As much as I hate admitting she’s right—”

_ “HA!” _

“—I  _ should  _ stop speaking so crassly,” he finishes. “In your presence at least. We should have some introductions and then you can help tidy up. That should get you familiar with the place enough for one day. Where’s the dwarf gone off to?”

“Someplace else,” Herenel supplies. The elf turns to her with such helplessness that Mairon can’t help but snort.

“Well now you’ve met Herenel,” the silver-eyed elf tells Mairon. “She has a smart mouth and that is just about all you need to know about her.”

Mairon does his best to bow politely at her.

“I am Calasion-  _ master  _ Calasion now, I suppose. And the dwarf—”

“Present.”

Mairon just about jumps out of his skin, scrambling around so fast he half-trips on his own robe. He hadn’t even heard the door open! How did the hairy fellow manage to sneak up behind him?

“See, there she is,” Herenel says. “Where’ve you been? You left without saying a word.”

“Fetching,” says the dwarf, and holds up a thick roll of vellum sheets. Her beard is so thick, even neatly braided into little gray rows that trail down her chin and over one shoulder, that Mairon can barely see her mouth moving at all when she speaks. ...Though something tells him she doesn’t speak much at all.

“The dwarf is Tove,” Calasion says, speaking in a soft whisper to Mairon, “and she is the  _ oldest  _ dwarf I have ever seen. ...Granted I haven’t seen very many, but all the same. I’ve heard rumors that she learned her craft from one of Feanaro’s kin. Given what I’ve seen of her skill I am inclined to believe them.”

Mairon shivers again. If Míriel managed to recognize him at first sight, how quickly will someone who learned from her grandsons?

“...So,” he says nervously, “did you learn from her then?”

The elf gives a low chuckle. “Not exactly. Herenel and I were silversmiths before we died. We’ve just been given hröar again, actually. They thought it would be best if we relearned our trade here in ah, safety, before we return officially. That makes us the same as you.”

_ Not in the slightest. _ But Mairon says nothing until Tove trots up to him with a broom.

“Name,” she says.

He freezes up. All this time he’s been mentally rehearsing how to introduce himself, but now that it’s actually come up his mind is completely blank. Tove waits patiently while he stammers over his own tongue.

“E-Erui. M-my name, it’s…”

Tove pats him on the shoulder before shuffling off. He can’t help but note she wears no gloves, but her arms are painted from fingertip to elbow with something dark like ink.

“Well, you’ve met all of us.” Calasion stretches with a grunt, fingers laced high above his head, and then beckons for him to follow. “Time to meet the forge itself.”

 

Mairon’s dizziness just gets worse the longer he stays in the forge. Soon he struggles to keep his broom moving, and then he struggles to see it, until finally he’s clinging to it blindly while he drops to his knees. Somehow he manages to free a hand and plant it on the ground, but though the stone floor is warm to his fingers it doesn’t help much. A strangely distant clammer tells him someone has noticed.

“...Wrong,” he barely hears. It’s like the words are barely there. “Erui? Can... hear- TOVE!”

Someone takes the broom from him, scoops him off the floor, but he’s so dizzy that much movement throws everything around until his stomach clenches painfully against his throat and he struggles to breathe. Splotches of color press into his good eye.

And then there’s Music.

A deep thrum, so deep he can barely hear- but oh can he feel it, rumbling through his bones and strangely easing the tension in his head. Something is pressed to his lips- water, he can taste water- and he struggles to swallow, somehow incredibly thirsty and nauseous all at once.

“Easy,” a gruff voice, a familiar voice, says from somewhere close by. The cup or whatever it was is taken away, letting him sit there and just breathe. Water helps, but not enough; the hurt is still there. Which way was up again? He still can’t tell.

He tries to move, to open his eye at least, and that turns out to be a mistake. His stomach does more than clench, it turns over completely, and suddenly his face is to the floor and all the water he just drank ends up on it. He gags, spine, chest, and all burning like acid even as someone tries rubbing his back, and his hair- someone’s trying to pull it back for him but he can  _ feel _ it and it  _ shrieks _ . 

“Breathe,” the gruff voice tells him. But it hurts, even when he tries, it hurts so much…

 

He’s staring at the ceiling, blinking slowly like waking up from a groggy dream. But this isn’t a ceiling he recognizes. Is he still asleep? It’s so rare that he has normal dreams, maybe this will be a nice one—

“Erui?”

An elleth pokes her head above his. She’s familiar, but it takes him a while before any sort of name comes to mind. It takes him longer to realize  _ he _ is Erui.

“Her…’nel,” he slurs. 

“That’s right!” Herenel smiles warmly at him. “It’s me. You remembered, that’s good! Gave us quite a scare you did, collapsing like that.”

“Didn’t mean to…”

“Shhh. We know. Just rest.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he really means it. To think of the grief he’s already caused her and the other smiths on the very first day, scaring them all and not even managing to sweep a small patch of floor!

“Oh dear! Poor little dear, no.” Herenel coos gently at him, as if he’s her baby brother or startled pet. It’s meant to be kind, he knows, but he isn’t sure how to accept it.

He hiccups instead, chest growing tight. But he’s too tired to cry.

Herenel tries to comfort him, but a painted hand claps her shoulder and she stops.

“Tove…”

“It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?” Herenel asks, but she’s already climbing to her feet. A single grunt from Tove is all she needs to leave. 

The dwarf helps Mairon sit up in silence. Once he’s propped up against a workbench, Tove sets what looks like a waterskin and something wrapped in paper between them. 

“Maia,” she says, though her voice almost sounds like a growl, “doesn’t need food. Elf does.” She pokes a painted finger at his chest, but she’s careful enough that it doesn’t hurt.

Mairon feels ice flood his veins before he remembers what Qision had said.

_ I may have suggested to them you are a half-Maia. _

“...How did you know?” he asks meekly. He doesn’t need to fake the fear in his voice.

“I Sang,” Tove explains, “and you listened.”

Suddenly the rumbling music makes sense.

“Elves are squeaky, can’t hear low sounds,” she continues. “Not as low as dwarves can make. But you,” she points at his chest again, “can hear mountain music. You feel the bones of the earth.”

Both of them fall quiet. The only sound is that of the fires crackling, and the little wrapped thing Tove pointedly nudges closer to him.

“...You sing like Mahal,” Mairon says softly. It’s mostly because the silence is starting to set him on edge, but he finds he really does mean it. There’s an ancient kind of comfort to her music, something he only remembers feeling from Aulë’s forges forever ago.

Tove ducks her head, one painted hand playing with her braided beard. “Unworthy,” she mumbles.

“I- I mean it!” he squeaks, and instantly regrets it as his head swims.

“Eat,” the dwarf chides, but there’s a bit of a twinkle behind her bushy brows. That too is strangely comforting, and at her prompting he finally unwraps a warm breadroll from the paper and takes a nibble.

It’s filled with some kind of stew that tastes bland but…  _ good _ . His stomach claws at his insides at the smell alone, but he can’t seem to chew fast enough for it. Little by little the dizziness fades and when he finally gets to the waterskin he discovers the drink sits this time. Tove watches him until he finishes it all.

“Why starve?” she asks him.

Mairon blinks at her. “...Pardon?”

She reaches over for his hand and pulls back his sleeve. He winces at how skeletal his arm looks compared to hers.

“Starving,” Tove says. “Why?”

He recoils before his thoughts can catch up. Míriel has fed him plenty of times, and Qision does too, on occasion, but the faceless healer and the others… Meals just aren’t something they talk about. At  _ all _ , now that he thinks about it. 

How has it taken him this long to discover he’s been slowly starving to death?

“...I don’t know.” The words come out like a whimper.

“Maiar see you as Maia,” Tove murmurs, understanding dawning on her face. “Not part elf.”

Mairon nods. He remembers a little about feasts, long before Laurelin and Telperion fell, and he’s seen more in tapestries here and there. Something must have changed while he was. ...Gone. And now the Maiar don’t bother at all concerning themselves with food.

The more he thinks on it, the more horror he feels. How has he not died already?

Tove claps a painted hand on his shoulder. “ _ My _ forge,” she tell him, and as she speaks a fire lights in her eyes. “My rules. You eat.”

“But where can I—”

“I will bring it. You eat.”

Mairon bites his lip, overwhelmed by the sudden warmth in his stomach and the sensation of being  _ full _ for once. How is he supposed to thank her?

Maybe when he learns more he can make her something pretty.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mairon gets some learning done.

Mairon grows stronger the more time he spends with the forge crew. At first he doesn’t notice; the meals Tove brings for him are simple and light, but he isn’t used to eating this consistently- or this much at once- and his first weeks are spent nursing aching innards and the dawning horror of just how bad things were before the smiths’ intervention.

But then things get easier.

Between Calasion and Herenel’s near constant fights (which are playful, Mairon’s noticed) they chatter near constantly. Even when his skin crawls with nerves too raw to move much, he discovers both elves are more than happy to explain every little step they make to him. He sits watching while the things they describe  _ click _ in wonderful ways that bring up little crumbs of memories, of how to straighten longer pieces of wire, and how hot to build a fire to refine iron into steel. When Calasion begins to quiz him he discovers to his delight that he  _ knows _ things, not just the process but the reasoning behind it.

When he’s well enough to scamper around, Herenel shows him how to build fires so they burn hot and long. She shows him the bellows, how to tell when flames need more air and how to tell when they need less. She walks him through crucibles and fuel, and why it’s so important to wear boots  _ and _ the apron  _ and _ wear gloves even when using longer tongs. She also, ever so helpfully, explains why Calasion is so fond of colorful language.

“He can’t help swearing, I think,” she whispers with a wink for Mairon. “He  _ is _ part Noldo.”

“I heard that!” comes Calasion’s voice from across the room.

Herenel merely sticks her tongue out at him.

 

“Are those two a couple?” Mairon asks later that night, broom in hand while Tove shows him how to sweep the corners of the room clear. 

The dwarf snorts and shakes her braided head at him. “Grew up together. Waiting for ‘Nel’s wife.”

Mairon nearly drops his broom. He fumbles with it, awkwardly hugging it close for a moment until he can sort out where his hands are supposed to be. “Herenel is married?” he asks.

Tove grunts a nod.

“What happened to her wife?” Mairon says, doing his best to keep his broom moving while he talks. Tove makes it look so easy. “Is she in the halls? What happened to her? If- if it’s alright that I ask, I mean.”

“Died,” the dwarf says simply. She pauses mid-sweep, then shrugs. “War of the Ring,” she clarifies. “Them two died. Wife survived. Died later, I guess. No body yet.”

This is perhaps the most she’s said at once. 

“...So Herenel and Calasion are here waiting for her to be reborn,” Mairon realizes. “Not because they still have things to relearn?”

Tove grunts again. “They keep using my good paper,” she adds fondly. 

Mairon looks over to where Calasion’s chasing his friend around with a handful of charcoal dust, trying to put it in her hair by the looks of things. Herenel swats at him with her broom, shrieking, but there’s a grin plastered on her face. Both of them are smudged all over.

“It must be nice to have family waiting for you,” Mairon finds himself whispering. The words open up a deep ache in his chest, a painful longing for something he’s never known- and probably never will.

Tove grunts vaguely. She reaches over to nudge his broom and he jumps, realizing he’s forgotten to keep sweeping. Nervously he swipes at the thin layer of metal and wood dust, trying to catch up.

“...Um, Lady Tove?”

Grunt.

“What’s the War of the Ring?”

 

“...So now they all think I died when Calasion and Herenel did- those are the two that pick on each other a lot- which, I guess isn’t that far off,” Mairon tells Tauriel, taking in deep gulps of air between long stretches of babble. “I… I mean, I died toward the end…”

“ _ At _ the end,” Tauriel corrects him gently. “Did your caretaker not teach you that part? He seems to have a real stick up his arse when it comes to history.”

“No.” Mairon fidgets with his sleeves. They’re starting to wear thin at the seams, especially where his arms have been rubbing against the workbench. “He sort of… stopped, once I started having nightmares.”

Tauriel wrinkles her nose. She’s grown on him again, now tall and willowy with the curves of a woman. But her hair is still wild in places, even now that she’s started braiding it tightly so it’s out of her face, and those defiant little strays peeping out make Mairon smile for some reason.

“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” she declares. “Even I couldn’t remember everything on my own! I had to study my own tapestry before I got things in order- honestly,  _ what _ is that Maia doing? And you’re still having trouble, aren’t you?”

He nods mutely. Meeting even a small handful of people has been more than enough to show him just how much he can’t remember. Qision never taught him how to interact with others. His manners stem from his own nervousness, and while that hasn’t led him wrong yet he couldn’t help but be shocked speechless when Tove insisted he not call her master.

Qision may have taught him to speak many languages, but none of the nuances. None of the customs. What he remembers of culture is fragmented at best.

“I am going to have  _ words _ with him,” Tauriel says through gritted teeth. She plucks frustratedly at the grass, shredding leaves between her fingers. “Maybe words with that healer too- what did you say her name was?”

“She doesn’t have one,” Mairon says with a little shrug. “Not all the Ainur do.”

“Right. Something about Songs. I remember. I should yell at them about feeding you more, too. Eru above, if I’d known how bad it was sooner…”

“It’s alright,” he mumbles. 

“It isn’t!” Tauriel snaps. It’s almost harsh enough to make him wince. “Look at me! We’re near the same age, but I’ve eaten every day and look at how much I’ve grown! You’ve maybe grown a few finger widths and are just as frail as the day I met you!”

Mairon doesn’t like how hard her voice gets when she’s angry, and while it’s comforting that she cares so much it also makes him feel queasy. “...They said I was sick,” he all but whispers.

“Yes, well,” his friend says, each word carefully spat out, “I’m starting to wonder how much of that is your health and how much is their  _ caretaking _ .”

The queasiness gets unbearably strong. He starts to curl in on himself, but that doesn’t help.

Tauriel pulls him onto her lap. “...I’m sorry,” she says, and her voice is so much warmer. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just… I  _ worry _ . You aren’t doing well and I’m frightened to leave you there alone lest something happen to you! I- I should visit more often. I’m going to.”

Mairon draws in a breath and leans his head on her shoulder, soaking in her warmth. He likes his friends in the forge, but none of them hold him like Tauriel does, let alone rock him and pet his hair. It’s… soothing. Even when his nerves ache. Maybe that’s why he feels better after visiting with her. “Promise?” he asks.

She smiles down at him. “I promise.”

He gives her a little smile back, and a thought comes to him. He squirms until he can reach the grass and plucks a few leaves to drop on top of her head.

She blinks, a look of utter confusion writing itself on her face. “...What’s that for?”

“I- I saw friends do that with each other,” he stammers nervously, and starts to panic. What if he’s done it wrong? What if she doesn’t like things in her hair?

Then Tauriel wrinkles her nose and grins, and he breathes a sigh of relief.

“You’re doing it wrong,” she tells him. “It’s more like…  _ This!” _

And she dumps a whole pile of leaves over his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please pardon any mistakes you may find. I wrote this at two in the morning.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The seeds of doubt begin to grow.

There is no winter in Valinor.

Mairon’s studies continue, both in the forge and out. Tove managed to scrounge up a few books on metallurgy and minerals for him, written in the geometric script of her people, and there are also books brought to the study by an elf who has Tauriel’s eyes but a face like weatherbeaten armor. He doesn’t dare ask the elf’s name. But the books are filled with records and culture and poetry that makes his breath catch in his throat when he tries to form the words out loud.

For once he feels included in the peace around him. He still forgets to eat at times, and nightmares still creep in at night, but there are _friends_ nearby, people who speak warmly and ask if he needs to rest.

It’s almost enough.

He studies the weather, from almanacs and diagrams of wind patterns, from stolen glances at the sky outside, and finds himself enchanted by it. His fingers collect old ink and paper dust from running his hands along the pages, tracing the surprising complexity of feathers and snowflakes.

Snow surprises him. Oh, he remembers the cold, how it piles up in great drifts that press to ice underneath by their own weight, how glacier sheets can shatter so sharp the pieces cut like daggers. He remembers how it numbs fingers, how the presence of snow muffles sound but clears the skies. He remembers people huddled close to cheerful fires or frozen stiff in deep dark places, trapped by blizzards and storms that blot out the sun itself from the sky. He _knows_ cold like he knows the dark, with frightful clarity and nightmares aplenty.

He just doesn’t remember _seeing_ it in person.

It brings up the sort of curiosity that has Mairon smuggling books under his pillow so he can read them late at night by the light of his own hair. He discovers traces of winter in old songs like wards to keep the cold away, tales of the Crossing of the Griding Ice of how the cold was so thick nothing could survive and the ocean itself was buried. There are mentions of it in books from Elrond’s library, carried all the way across the sea from Imladris, along with lengthy recipes for frostbite salves. These he expected. But more sleepless nights bring him poems of _praise_ , words that describe the crystalline beauty, that form the fractals found in frost, of magical and wonderful things that bring laughter to children and a new medium for sculpting, of inspiration found in frozen dew that glitters like Varda’s stars.

But none of these are from Valinor. All of these words, _every_ line of ink was penned by hands across the sea.

He knows he likely shouldn’t, but the next time Qision gives him a break from studying, he tugs on the Maia’s sleeve.

The bone mask almost creaks as it tilts to face him.

“How long have I been here?” Mairon asks.

“Long enough to start asking questions,” Qision answers.

“Not today! I mean- how… how old am I?”

There’s a little pause where Qision’s mask tilts toward the ceiling. “...Two years and ten days. It has been that long since your… _release_ from the Void.”

 _“Two?”_ Mairon nearly sends an inkwell flying as he stands in his chair.

“Two _Valian_ years,” Qision says. “And Valian days. The lamps here may react to Arien, but I remember the Trees.” This isn’t the first or even tenth time he’s said this, but there’s the same twinge of pride coloring his voice as all the others.

“...So what would that be in Arien’s time?”

“Twenty-odd years. Comparable to elven children. You _are_ still very much a child, if that is what you were after.”

“It’s not!” Mairon blurts. “I mean… That’s enough time for the seasons to change, isn’t it?”

Qision traces his own mask with a finger. “On the other side, yes. These are the Undying Lands, Mairon. We see no death here. No flower fades, no leaf has reason to wither. There is no darkness, even at night. This is as Ea should have been, before the Dark One’s tainting.”

Mairon takes a bit to think. The other side must mean across the ocean, in middle-Earth. But he’s seen flowers wither plenty of times when Tauriel took him out to play with daisy chains, and leaves fall when bugs ate at their stems or creatures nibbled away the branches. He gets the feeling Qision won’t take kindly to him bringing it up. _It’s the peaceful kind of decay_ , he’d probably say, _that nourishes life instead of fading to dust_.

But still, leaves do fall in Valinor.

“So why doesn’t snow?”

“Pardon?” Qision asks, and he jumps, realizing he was speaking out loud.

“I- ...why is there no winter here? I know it takes longer for things to fade here, but we have day and night, don’t we? What about other things that mark the passage of time?”

“We have seasons of growth and seasons of rest,” the Maia tells him. “The Kindler and the Weaver have crafts that remember the movement of each day. That is enough.”

“But no winter?”

“Cold is evil,” Qision says as if this is the simplest thing. “There is no evil here. ...Unless you intend to fall on old habits.”

“I don’t,” Mairon says quickly. The words come out much sharper than he intended, and this time he knows enough to recognize the tension filling the silence that follows.

“...One would hope, Mairon. One would hope.”

Before he can ask what that means an open book is shoved at him, and the lessons continue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bit of clarification here:  
> one valian year = 9 and some change in arda years. it's like a three digit decimal but I round to ten for sake of ease. the same is true for valian days versus ardan days.  
> 30 arda years = ~13 years of age for elves. this isn't in elf time, this is physical maturity. another estimate because not all graphs were created equal lol.  
> Mairon, being roughly 20 years old is the equivalent of eight or nine as- being a maia- he ages slower than elven children. Tauriel grew up fast because she's already been a kid once and the second time around is always a little faster.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> eleven chapters in and Mairon finally gets a day off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points if you can guess who the background twins are!

“You’ve been staring at that for quite a while.”

Mairon gives a weak sound of acknowledgement.

“Is everything alright?” Herenel asks. She settles carefully on the bench beside him, reaching out to leaf through the sketches he’s left sprawled all over the table. “You’ve hit a block, haven’t you?”

He finally looks up. “A block?”

“Yes, a…” Herenel pauses, pouting like a duck as she thinks. “...A... um.” She snaps her fingers several times. “Bother, I can’t remember the word in Westron  _ or _ Sindarin! Oh dear. It’s a lack of inspiration, something that… well, puts a  _ block _ in your way, I suppose. Such as when you have a project in mind but you’ve no idea where to start working. Does that sound familiar?”

Mairon folds his little arms on the table’s edge and rests his chin on them. It sort of does, but that’s only part of his problem. The only world he knows is the one inside the Halls, and the only designs outside his memories are the shapes of pillars and crystal lanterns. There isn’t much to take inspiration  _ from _ . And lately when he’s tried to study, the buzzing inside his mind has been louder than the excitement of knowledge. 

And he doesn’t dare trust his dreams. Not now that he knows what they are.

“...I suppose.”

Herenel  _ hmm _ s next to him, and makes another duck-face. “Perhaps we’ve been working you too hard? You’ve done nothing but drink instructions since you arrived here. It might be best if you rest a while and let it soak in.”

And do what in the meantime? Go where? Studying is all he has! When he isn’t with Tauriel or the forge he’s left with empty halls and tapestries full of people who wish he didn’t exist. There isn’t much else here for him, he realizes, and the thought sits strangely like a stone in his stomach.

“Will I still have to help clean?” he asks.

The elleth snorts a laugh and lightly claps his shoulder as if she’s just successfully cheered him up. “That depends! I’ll check with Tove.” She ruffles his hair and gets up. Mairon tries to organize his sketches- mostly charcoal smeared diagrams of basic jewelry- but there isn’t much to it. Only a few pages, all sloppy, all things he thought he’d get a better feel for on paper but didn’t. They all seem rather pointless now, and though he knows he shouldn’t he has the urge to crumple them one by one and chuck them into the kiln’s fire.

He drops the pages when he hears Tove’s footsteps behind him. She walks with a heavy sort of grace, each step with as much purpose as she puts into her craft. He swings his legs over the bench to face her, expecting more advice—

She lifts him straight into the air. 

“What,” he squeaks. “Lady Tove!”

“Play time,” is all she says as she settles him on her shoulders. She isn’t that tall, even by dwarven standards, and it doesn’t make him feel all that much taller, but there’s something reassuring about how  _ solid _ her broad shoulders seem, something powerful that makes him feel even smaller.

“...Play?”

“All work. No play.” Tove tilts her head up to look at him. “Play time now.” And off she trots.

 

Mandos has a rooftop. For some reason Mairon thought the endless rows of pillars just reached up into the sky forever, but no, Tove knows the way to the stairs that go _all_ the way up. Something about her gait makes the climb seem easy, or maybe these stairs are just shorter than the set Tauriel found. The Halls are strange like that.

Even stranger, the rooftop looks like a garden. If it weren’t for the stone arch behind them Mairon might think they were just standing in a well groomed field covered in hedges like towers and the tinkling music of yet more fountains, and stranger still, when he turns around the arch is just an arch. When Tove sets him down he wanders all the way around it just to be sure, but it isn’t until he pokes his head back in that he sees the stairs again. 

“I had no idea this was here,” he breathes. Beside him the dwarf rumbles a chuckle.

“Good stone,” she says. “Fresh air. Real food. Does a body good.”

“...So the Halls have everything you need to recover inside?” he ventures.

“Somewhere.” She takes him by the hand and guides him between rows of trees and plants shaped like statues until they come into a little clearing where there are benches and little stone tables with grids carved into the tops for games. She picks one out, plops Mairon at one end, and takes the other seat.

Mairon folds his arms on the table’s edge, watching closely as she starts arranging pieces on the board in rows of colored glass that catch the light in little circles of color in their shadows. 

“Know this game?”

He shakes his head. The board looks familiar, but that’s all he has. Tove just grunts and starts walking him through the rules.

By the time they start their fifth game Mairon starts catching on. It’s a mock-battle of elven lords, the blue and green stones each representing a different army, but it’s a game where nobody has to die. Captured soldiers are set to the side, unharmed, and even rescued back to the field if the right pieces make it to the right corner. While Mairon isn’t very good at keeping an eye on all his soldiers (he only has the one good one, after all) the longer they play the better he gets at capturing Tove’s captains.

There are a few others in the clearing by now, a small circle of elves so old they have beards down to their chests, and a laughing pair, one still fëa and the other not, but their shapes are so alike it’s almost like watching a mirror play with itself. Their laughter is so strong sometimes Mairon pauses to look over.

Tove waits for him, only giving a patient grunt when he takes too long to finish his turn. Sometimes she takes little breaks of her own, picking at forge dust under her nails and scratching at parts where the inky darkness on her skin is starting to flake off.

“What is that, anyhow?” Mairon finally asks, and when the dwarf looks up he points to her hands.

“What is that?” she echoes, pointing in turn to the bit of void-black peeping out of his sleeves. 

He rolls up one sleeve to show her the garment that nearly covers him from head to toe. “It’s… protection,” he says. “I’m very sensitive, so wearing this makes it hurt less.”

He doesn’t miss the flash of pity in the dwarf’s eyes, but she says nothing of it, only studying her hands thoughtfully for a moment.

“Similar,” she decides, waving her fingers at him. “But this is paint.”

“And it protects your hands?”

“From fire.”

Mairon blinks. It makes sense now, why he’s never seen her wear gloves in the workrooms, even when her work warranted a thick apron and mask. Is his suit made of the same stuff? It must be, if such a paint can protect a dwarf from burning herself on cherry-red iron.

“Isn’t it tedious to have it on your hands all the time?” he asks. “Wouldn’t gloves be easier?”

Tove shrugs, and he recognizes the look on her face. It  _ would _ be easier, but that isn’t the point, is it. She closes her eyes and runs a finger along the table’s rim, gently dragging every time she finds a rough spot.

“Closer,” she says.

“To the details?” Mairon’s leaning over the table now, eye wide with excitement.

“And more.”

“The Music?”

“And more.”

He chews on his lip, thinking. Everything about Tove seems deep rooted in something. Even the littlest braid in her hair has a meaning, like poetry or the tapestries in the halls below, her skills he’s found were learned from generations of careful teachers and ancient stories, and her ability to Sing…

“...Closer to  _ Mahal _ ,” he realizes out loud, and the dwarf cracks a wide smile at him.

A Vala would have no need of aprons or forging gloves or any of the tools she and Mairon use. A Vala could shape the tiniest of stones with a touch of his will alone, bend beams as tall as towers with just a song, call forth fire on a whim. He could forge with thoughts nestled in the palm of his hand and not burn from scorching metal and molten stone.

The sort of things Mairon used to be able to do.

“So it’s not just about being able to feel detail, it’s a form of worship. Respect. To feel your craft as he might.” Mairon’s voice is strangely soft to his own ears, hushed by awe. Tove hears him anyway.

“Also helps with detail,” she says and winks at him.

Somewhere behind them the twins shriek, one of them laughing as he drags his brother to the fountain and dumps him in unceremoniously. It’s peaceful, even with the silence broken by them hollering; the sun is warm, insects flicker about like motes of gold on the breeze, the garden smells sweet and earthy… And he’s just won his fourth game in a row with Tove, though he suspects she’s letting him win on purpose. He half turns in his seat just to drink it all in.

“Having fun?”

Mairon breathes deeply, feeling a little smile creep onto his face.

“...Yeah,” he says. “I think I am.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Several explanations are long overdue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay longer than I would have liked to get back to this. I'm so sorry for the wait, but to make it up to you guys I'm going to see if I can't swing a double update!

And still the nightmares keep happening. 

Studying tapestries and dusty texts has only given him names for the faces, the places, the deeds, and the knowing makes it all the more real. It’s one thing to read about Annatar, but another entirely to watch him at work, and more terrible still to dream of the little things; elves Sauron spirited away that no one would miss and the things he did to them, those he stole who  _ would _ be missed, the words he whispered in the ears of orcs and men, the lies he twisted and _oh how he did love to twist_ …

He does his best not to think on it when he’s awake. That’s about all he can do. Tauriel’s visits are a much welcome distraction, but the more skills he rediscovers in the forge, the more nervous he gets. Certain things, projects that should be innocent and harmless as a plain band ring, make him shy away as if Tove had asked him to jump off the garden roof. The forge elves say nothing of it, at first, but the more it happens the more they ask in passing for details, when he died, how and where, if there were oddities involved…

It makes Mairon’s skin crawl. 

 

“Have you tried asking them to stop?” Tauriel asks him. She finally found the stairs to the roof, so of course the first thing she’s done is steal Mairon for a picnic between flowering bushes where no one can see them. “You don’t owe them your life’s story just because they’re your teachers.”

“Don’t I?” Mairon fidgets with his pastry- and finds out the hard way just how sticky its filling is. “Master Tove might as well have saved my life.” Not knowing what else to do with it, he crams the leaky pastry whole into his mouth, but he still has a handful of berry juice to deal with. Tauriel has to rescue him with her own handkerchief. 

“Well if Tove is holding that over your head then she’s a bad teacher,” she says sternly. “Rescuing you just to use you later isn’t helping, it’s manipulating.”

Maybe it’s too much pastry at once, but it feels like there are rocks in his throat. 

Tauriel wraps him in a hug and watches carefully to be sure he doesn’t choke. Luckily the pastry's a small one. She waits patiently for him to swallow, but then doesn’t pressure him into talking. He likes how she fusses like that. She doesn’t treat him like he’s made of glass like Herenel does, or glass filled with poison like Qision and so many others seem to think he is. Tauriel dares him to run, to craft with as much detail as her glass butterfly, but when he finds he can’t… there are no lectures. No disappointment. Not even the twisted lips Míriel sometimes makes when she’s thinking too hard.

Tauriel just helps him move on. 

“...Do you want me to talk to them?” she finally asks.

Mairon fidgets on her lap. “What would you say?”

“That you aren’t ready to open up about very personal matters just yet,” Tauriel says. She shapes every word to have a slight punch, an emphasis that almost isn’t there, yet carries surprising weight. “And if that doesn’t work then I yell at them.”

“You wouldn’t really!” But she would, he  _ knows _ she would, he doesn’t need to see the wide grin on her face or the stars in her eyes turn to quiet fire. Not when he’s seen her face down the Lord of Mandos himself.

...And win. Sort of.

“I’ll fight them if I have to,” she says sweetly. “Two silversmithing elves and a dwarf. They’d be strong, probably hit real hard, but they probably aren’t trained in combat. ...Mm, Tove might be trouble. But! I’m fast and I’ve had several hundred years of guard duty, plus a hundred more with the Rangers.  _ And _ I’ve been practicing since I- erm-  _ arrived _ . I bet I could take them.”

“Please don’t fight my teachers,” Mairon says.

“You’re a spoilsport.” But she ruffles his hair gently, and he knows that she won’t.

 

It’s a few days later before Mairon’s next lesson in the forge starts. There aren’t windows in the Halls to see the sun passing by, but he imagines its warmth rising and setting with the shifting of the lanterns. He’d imagine the fainter glow from the crystals were moonlight too, but he hasn’t actually seen the moon for himself yet. Tauriel’s promised to show him the next time she’s free after dark.

She’s waiting outside his door when he sets off for the forge. Sprawled in the hall like she’s about to fall asleep waiting for him, he nearly trips over her legs, but she laughs it off and climbs to her feet.

“I’m coming with you today. This is my excuse,” and she frees the glass pendant from her shirt. “I still want to know how it was made,  _ and _ I’m making sure your teachers aren’t making you uncomfortable.”

Mairon opens his mouth, but finds he doesn’t  _ want _ to argue with her. It’s honestly quite a relief to know if anything goes wrong, Tauriel will be right there.

She lets him hold her hand as they walk. 

 

Tove doesn’t agree to explain so much as she gathers a handful of scraps and… walks Tauriel through the whole process. Without saying a word. With the pieces being so small and a skilled craftsman Singing, it takes maybe an hour to twist color into the glass and then the glass into wires, and then the wires on a chain to cool. And most of the time spent is waiting for it to melt. 

This was for Tauriel’s sake, but something about the glow of molten glass, the texture, the  _ smell _ , it’s just so appealing. Mairon finds himself taking mental notes the whole time, even though he’s supposed to be sweeping out the ash bins instead of watching.

“Erui!” Tauriel chirps, and he’s both shocked to hear that name from her lips and relieved that she remembered not to call him Mairon here. “You should learn glassmaking next!”

Tove snorts, combing a painted hand through her beard. The braidwork is different today, vastly different from the other weaves Mairon’s seen her wear. “Know a guy. Teler. Lives toward the coast.”

Tauriel whistles. “That’s a ways away. We’d have to find you a horse.”

“What’s this about a horse?” Calasion is back with several new elves, all carrying loads of fuel bricks. Mairon scrambles to empty the bins and be out of their way.

“Glassmaking,” Tove says.

“Oh.” Calasion sets down his load, flexing a shoulder where his basket strap pulled a bit tight, and steps aside to fetch his apron while the others start emptying baskets into a pile. “Are you making a horse?” He peeps over Tove’s shoulder, but the… demonstration project is more shaped like a rough flower. He raises a single eyebrow.

“Traveling to a glassmaker,” Tauriel clarifies. 

“OH!” says Calasion. “That fellow on the coast, yes? Yes, that is a bit far on foot! I see now.”

And then he pauses, giving Tauriel a blank look as if just now realizing she’s there. He blinks, looks around, then back at her.

“Guest,” says Tove.

“Very helpful, master dwarf. Who are you?”

“A guest.” Tauriel manages not to smirk with her face, but Mairon can see it escaping through her eyes instead.

For half a breath Mairon worries Calasion’s going to genuinely lose his temper with her. But the silver-eyed elf slumps a bit and fumbles with his apron ties. “Please don’t make friends with Herenel.”

Tove snorts loudly. She checks on the flower, even though it’s long since cooled enough to handle, and drops it into Tauriel’s hands.

“Oh!” she says. “A lesson _and_ a gift? You’re too kind, sir!”

Tove actually pauses. Mairon does his best not to gawk, but- well the bins are taken care of and he’s a little confused. 

“...Met many dwarves?” Tove asks.

Tauriel smiles at her- _ him _ , Mairon realizes- and plants her hands on her hips. “I was… fortunate enough to fight alongside Durin’s kin once, a long time ago. One- um- Kili, son of Dís, he was a dear friend.”

“Lonely Mountain.” Tove closes his eyes. “He teach you to read beards?”

“No, actually. A fellow that went by Clover did. He tried to teach me a bit of mining and how to navigate caves, but I’m afraid a lot of it went over my head.”

The dwarf regards her carefully, almost not sure what to make of her. But then he claps her arm- even if she bent over for him he still wouldn’t reach her shoulder- and off he goes to check on the crucibles. 

Mairon edges into her shadow.

“...Beards?” he whispers.

“Oh!” Tauriel kneels and faces him, combing a handful of hair over her shoulder so she can twist some hasty braids into it. “All dwarves have beards, you know this right? Well how do you know on sight if the dwarf is a man or a woman? Well- the truth is it doesn’t really matter all that much- but if they want you to know they’re a woman, they’ll have braids like…” She finishes a weave that looks quite a bit like Tove’s from a few weeks ago, minus a few clasps and beads. As soon as she lets go the braids start unwinding, and she combs them the rest of the way free with her fingers. “What Master Tove is wearing right now is the braid that says  _ hello! I am a man _ . And if the dwarf wants you to know they are neither…” She plaits a third pattern.

And something  _ clicks _ .

“...You can be neither?” he asks.

Tauriel pauses, and in that same heartbeat a lock of hair escapes her and springs itself free, pulling several inches of braid awkwardly sideways. “There’s… Yes, you can be neither, you can be both, you can fluctuate between… This doesn’t just apply to dwarves. Mairon,” she says in a voice so low only he can hear, “is it time for another picnic? If you have questions—”

There’s a deafening shriek as one of Calasion’s elves drops his entire load and staggers back.

Away from Mairon.

“You-” the elf stammers. “How-  _ why are  _ **_you_ ** _ here? _ ” 

If any one of the forge crew had made a pin sized for the smallest of squirrels and managed to drop it on the floor, that sound would have be like thunder in the silence that follows.

“Do you take issue with apprentice Erui?” Calasion asks, quite sharply.

“Erui?” the elf almost laughs. It comes out bitter and hollow and makes Mairon feel cold all over. “I’m talking about the Dark Lord’s  _ waif  _ over there!”

He spits, and Mairon swears his heart really stops this time.

_ “Sauron.” _


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DOUBLE UPDATE BABY

If the silence before was thick, it’s screaming now.

Calasion looks between the elf and Mairon and back again, as if there’s some riddle under his nose that he can’t make heads or tails of.

“You’re joking,” Tove growls. "Must be."

“I most certainly am not,” the elf snaps, “and I’d appreciate it if- in the future- should you ask my help you warn me if that- that _thing_ is going to be there!”

By now his fellows have gathered around and behind him, some still clutching their deliveries and some empty handed. They’re whispering, but quiet as their voices may be each word feels like a dagger.

_...Truly? He looks so frail…_

_It_ is _him! I’ve seen him following wraiths in the halls!_

_...Of all the curses to follow us..._

_He can’t- he wouldn’t hurt us? Surely not with so many watching…_

_Eru above why would they let him walk like a free man!_

_I thought the Necromancer would be taller…_

Mairon’s breath catches so sharply he can’t breathe, like before when he fainted on Tove. Their eyes, the _M_ _usic_ behind all the elves is ominous as a storm and suffocating against his skin like they’re trying to drown him with their will alone and it’s hard, it’s so hard to breathe—

Tauriel grips the back of his robe and pins him to her side. She shifts her footing, just a slight, but it’s enough to place herself firmly between him and then. He can _feel_ her anger through her skin, through her fingers clenched so tight they feel more like a statue’s, but it’s a calm rage. Steady. He clings to it, to her, as the only shield he has.

“Y… You said you were only half-Maia,” Calasion breathes. His eyes catch Mairon's, silently pleading, begging him to say something. And Tove- the dwarf just stands beside him, face completely unreadable and arms limp at his sides. “Please tell me that was truth. Your illness- Erussake, you’re a _child_ —”

“Of course a demon would spin such tales so deep and believable!” snaps a woman, Noldor by the looks of her height, and she snatches a fire poker, points it like a brand, and Mairon nearly screams. “Is that not how he claimed the isle of our cousins, the Numenoreans for his own?”

“I think it’s time we leave,” whispers Tauriel, and how her voice can sound so calm at a moment like this is far beyond understanding. Mairon doesn’t trust himself to speak- not that he’s sure he _can_ \- so he nods against her thigh and hopes she feels it.

“I thought the Maiar said he was harmless!” another elf wails. “They promised us we’d be safe here!”

“And safe you ARE!” Tauriel nearly roars. All eyes turn to her as Mairon’s scapegoat.

“Miss please,” Calasion breathes, and it nearly sounds like his heart’s breaking. “Please…”

“We can discuss this when you _aren’t_ all armed with tools and like,” she snaps back, and several elves shuffle awkwardly with their pokers and tongs and mallets. “Perhaps after you’ve had some tea and a good calm-down?”

“No denial.” Tove finally moves, to fold his arms and stare hard at the both of them. Mairon can feel himself wilting behind Tauriel’s leg, and her hand presses him all the closer to her side.

“Because you already have the truth!” she says. “He _is_ a child and he _is_ frail. He could not hurt you even if he wanted to! Which- I might add- is the last thing he wants.”

“And how would you know _the Necromancer’s_ thoughts so well?” the poker elf demands.

 _“His name,”_ Tauriel growls, _“is Mairon.”_

It’s as if she’s directly punched her entire audience in the face.

Tove actually winces, and more painfully he turns away. He can’t even look at Mairon now. And beside him Calasion’s lip trembles and his eyes still plead for someone- anyone- to tell him this is all some cruel joke.

It’s all making Mairon dizzy, like there’s too much air or not enough of it, and he can see strands of his own hair over his shoulders that have gone limp and dull as old wheat abandoned to rot in some dark corner.

The few friends he’s finally managed to make, the few people who _cared_ about him…

...They’re never going to smile at him again, are they? They won’t love him anymore, they won’t come running if he cries, they’re certainly not going to help keep him fed, and the jokes and comfort- those are gone too- all because he isn’t worth a damn once they know his name. Worth damning perhaps, but not worth… anything else.

They hate him now.

What meager breath he has breaks into a sob.

“...It’s true?” Calasion asks weakly. He’s crying too, but there are twinges of anger now. “All this time… Was everything a lie?” And then he laughs, the same hollow broken sound Mairon’s heard many times in his nightmares. “Was your oath to make no weapon because you’d already mastered them all?”

“Stop,” Mairon chokes.

And louder, Tauriel says, “We’re leaving now.” She half-drags him a step or two closer to the door. But Calasion is far from finished.

“We were your _friends_ . We went out of our way for y- I rewrote an entire thesis on fluxes for your sake, _with translations!_ I left off visiting my mother to do it and you were just using me—”

No…

“That’s _enough!”_ Tauriel snaps.

“—USING US!” Calasion roars.

No!

“AND FOR WHAT? Trinkets? Bread that a Maia shouldn’t even need? Or was it our trade secrets you wanted to sink your filthy little claws into so you could—”

_“STOP IT!”_

 

In that instant several things happen. Mairon’s scream, for one, is the loudest it had ever been- probably the loudest it would never be again. He swears he felt something tear in his throat, not that it matters much now. But in his voice, with all his anguish and grief, with all the terror and sadness came his Music, and it reaches out.

But he cannot touch the forge crew. The elves, most of them burn from within with the light of those who’ve seen the Two Trees and had their Light written on the memory of their very souls. And Tove has his own Music as thunderous and dense as the stone around them. But fire…

Fire still listens.

Every last spark in the forge, each candle and brazier, torch and kiln, they answer Mairon’s cry with an echo.

Every last one of them flares with newfound life, tongues of flame taller than a man roaring with the raw force of Mairon’s pain—

—And then it’s all burnt up.

And every last spark dies out as swiftly as it was born.

 

Mairon’s left like an eggshell, all burnt up from the inside out until there’s just a fragile bubble of ash. Everything’s a painful daze, a vague sense of rawness behind a wall of numb that should hurt terribly but… _doesn’t_. And he knows it should worry him.

Eventually he realizes he’s still got some panic left in him, because he’s been running all this time. Halls flash past but he doesn’t care which ones or how deep into the Halls he’s going, just that there’s something angry behind him and he can’t let it catch up, can’t let it near…

Something grabs his arm with a grip so painful he’s terrified it’ll rip him in two. He’s screaming before he can think, but then there’s a hand over his mouth and he’s too weak to fight.

“Shut _up_ you stupid boy!”

He freezes, or does his best to. He’s shaking so hard the stranger’s grip is the only thing keeping him off the floor and the sobs, the terrified sobs won’t stop and let him breathe.

The stranger pulls him into the shadows, behind a pillar where there’s a gap in the wall just barely wide enough to slip through. They stay there, pinned in the silence until Mairon can’t remember which way is up, but somewhere past the pillars, somewhere in the halls he can hear shouting and footsteps.

Eventually even the footsteps fade. The stranger slowly lets Mairon go and he crumples like wet tissue, one arm folded painfully beneath his chest but he’s too empty to move, far too drained to even cry anymore.

 _Please_ , he wants to say, to beg this stranger not to hurt him. _Spare me. P_ _le_ _ase…_

...He’s not sure why any of it should matter anymore.

He can feel the stranger kneel by him and he would brace if he had the strength...

A little glass butterfly clinks as it’s placed on the marble just next to his face. A butterfly on a chain that looks so alike to the one worn by—

“Tauriel.”

Something deep inside unclenches and everything else fades into nothing.


End file.
